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Increased alcohol preference in rats following repeated exposures to alcohol

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Summary

When offered water and different solutions of ethyl alcohol in a freechoice situation, naive rats prefer alcohol at low concentrations but reject alcohol as the concentrations are increased sequentially. Rats which were either group or individually housed and forced to drink a non-preferred 12 or 15 per cent alcohol solution, drank less alcohol than control animals in a subsequent free-choice test. On the other hand, the animals that were repeatedly exposed to 11-day periods during which the concentrations of alcohol were systematically increased from 3 to 30 per cent consumed two to three times more alcohol in the seventh sequence than in the first sequence. In the free-choice situation this acclimation effect occurred when water was constantly present. This method appears to be useful for inducing animals to consume large volumes of ethyl alcohol.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Laboratory of Neuropsychology, Purdue University, Lafayette, Indiana

    Warren L. Veale & Robert D. Myers

Authors
  1. Warren L. Veale
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  2. Robert D. Myers
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Additional information

This research was supported by NSF Grant GB 7906, ONR contract N 00014-67-A-0226-0003 and by a grant from the Wallace Laboratories. We thank Linda Kwolek, Sue Riley, T. J. Cicero and P. Curzon for their valuable assistance.

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Veale, W.L., Myers, R.D. Increased alcohol preference in rats following repeated exposures to alcohol. Psychopharmacologia 15, 361–372 (1969). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00403711

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00403711

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